LOS ANGELES - Drunks in tutus, drugs in the bathroom and chick
fights in the parking lot don't sound like the stuff of a
librarian's memoir, but Don Borchert's book has them all.

In "Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public
Library," Borchert culls the strangest stories from his 13 years as
an assistant librarian in a small branch library in Torrance, Calif.,
southwest of downtown Los Angeles.

With wry humor, "Free for All" (Virgin, 240 pages,
$24.95) offers an insider's look at how a would-be sanctuary has
become, as his title suggests, a catch-all gathering place where devoted
readers are joined by Internet-savvy latchkey kids, semi-homeless
misfits and everybody in between.

The result has librarians talking - some not so nicely - about
changes in their image and their place of work.

"Everyone knows about the library, but they just see it from
the front," Borchert, 58, said recently over lunch near his branch.
He is soft-spoken and white-haired, with wire-rim glasses, and seems to
have the patience of a man who has answered countless patron queries
over the years.

"There's so much else happening that's probably
universal to libraries, which is what I wanted to put down on
paper."

Librarians are praising the book for busting some of the
stereotypes of their profession - although some say Borchert does not go
far enough.

One is Scott Douglas, who writes the popular Web column
"Dispatches From a Public Librarian" for McSweeney's
Internet Tendency. He also is the author of the upcoming book
"Quiet Please."

He objects to Borchert's claim that librarians are natural
introverts. As Douglas wrote on his blog, the stereotype "may be
true of librarians 50 years ago, but it's certainly not true
today!" Douglas blames Hollywood - movies such as "It's a
Wonderful Life," in which Mary Bailey is doomed to be a librarian
had her husband never lived, much to his horror.

Then there are librarians who are upset mostly that Borchert is
being called a librarian at all - the term technically applies only to
people who have a master's degree in the field. Borchert
doesn't.

"It is a sensitive area for some people. A lot of fields have
this sort of caste system," American Library Association President
Loriene Roy said. "But to the public, anyone in the library is a
librarian."

Roy noted that the professional aspect of the field does help
attract recruits.

In the past decade, as more graduate programs have been launched
and Internet access has become available at nearly every public library,
younger people are entering the increasingly tech-friendly field.

Librarian bloggers - such as the Liberry blog and the Live Journal
community dedicated to librarians - have long provided insight of the
Borchert kind into the library world.

"I hope if they stereotype us as anything now," Douglas
said, "it would be as hip, young and idealistic. That'll be
the librarian of the future."

Younger librarians, plus younger patrons, mean a changing library.
More libraries also are creating bookstore atmospheres by adding cafes
and dropping the Dewey Decimal System for topical categories.

Three in four, according to Roy, offer free video gaming events,
and of the patrons who attend those programs, well more than half return
to the library for other types of events.

Fears that technology - and the younger crowd that has come of age
with it - would push the library into irrelevancy haven't been
realized.

A recent Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that
more than 20 percent of Americans ages 18 to 30 have turned to a library
for information about health, jobs, government benefits and other
issues, compared with 12 percent of the general population. Pew also
found that library usage actually declines with age.

Still, Borchert has blunt remarks for people younger than 18 and
the grown-ups who treat the library as a drop-off day-care center.

"We have kids who would almost convince you that, yes, there
is evil in the world," Borchert said. But, he noted, they have
their reasons for misbehaving. "If I were that age, I could do an
hour in the library, and after that, you start thinking things like,
`Will this burn?'?"

Theresa Babiar, a former colleague of Borchert's who features
prominently in his book and is a youth librarian at the main branch in
Torrance, had another explanation.

"Students are just becoming more assertive about what they
want, and they question authority more," she said.

Babiar mentioned that the Internet played a role in kids'
bending library rules, too.

"For them it's a social tool, and they don't use it
quietly. They call their friends over and talk," she said.

But as Borchert's book shows, being loud is the least offense.
A chair was thrown at Borchert.

Douglas and Roy have both received death threats.

"In a public setting there's always some danger,"
Roy said. "But most kids are pretty good."

Kids aren't Borchert's only target - he's not shy
about assessing his colleagues or the system in which they work. Of
unions, he writes, "It was a solidarity thing ... an adorable,
romantic notion that neither side seems to believe."

He casually dismisses the idea that a burka worn by a newly hired
colleague encourages conservative sexual mores. "I didn't
think she had a real handle on the American male ego and the lengths a
male will go to fantasize," Borchert explained. "For example,
phone sex. There's very little contact going on there, and
it's a billion-dollar industry. ... Men are pigs, I think we all
know this by now."

Of a black janitor whom Borchert's editors worried he
portrayed too cartoonishly, Borchert said, "That's who he is.
He does this to himself."

Borchert added, "If I seem to be denigrating anyone, I
don't intend it. So far, the reactions have all been
positive."

That might have something to do with Borchert's genuine
compassion for the people who create a sense of community within the
library. Borchert shows schmaltz-free empathy for young regulars who
develop relationships with librarians.

Some of those ties last for years, as Borchert realized at his
first reading. Three young women in attendance recalled coming to the
same branch, nearly two decades earlier, to listen to then-volunteer
Borchert play the accordion.

Do the changes at libraries mean curtains for a place devoted to
books and quiet? Borchert is unfazed.

"Some see libraries as fragile," he said. "But the
library of 20 years ago was nothing like the library of today, and will
be nothing like the library of five years from now. They're
changing, and we just don't know what they're becoming."

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